Purchase of a home is an event that can involve various financial issues. Raising the money to buy the home through a mortgage loan is one issue, but other issues exist. For example, many people choose to obtain life insurance to cover the amount of money borrowed, in order to ensure that there are sufficient assets for the person's family to remain in the home in the event of the death of the family's primary income provider. As another example, purchase of a home is usually accompanied by purchase of homeowner's insurance.
The time when a person moves from one home to another (a “move event”) provides an opportunity to consider various types of financial products in addition to the purchase money mortgage itself—e.g., various types of insurance may be considered. However, these types of financial products are typically offered and marketed separately, and are not structured around a move event.
A move event provides an opportunity to consider various types of financial products, such as a mortgage, homeowner's insurance, and life insurance, together as one package.
A customer may visit a financial services company's web site to apply for a mortgage loan. As part of the process of applying for the mortgage, the customer may provide certain data, such as the customer's income, address, and the amount to be borrowed. Additionally, certain information may be collected about the customer, such as credit scores, insurance scores, and any existing financial history that the company may have concerning that customer. Since this information about the customer and the applied-for loan is available to the company's web server during the application process, this information can be used to offer additional products to the customer. For example, information about the location of the property can be used to determine a price of homeowner's insurance. Moreover, information about the amount of money being borrowed may assist in determining an amount of life insurance that the customer might wish to purchase, and the customer's known risk factors can be used to determine a cost of that insurance.
When the customer completes a mortgage application, he or she may be offered a package or bundle of financial services products, such as homeowner's insurance and/or some type of life insurance. Information collected from the mortgage application, and information such as credit scores and the company's recorded experience with the customer, may be used to determine what type of package to offer to the customer, and the price at which the package is to be offered. A web site that is configured to offer such a package in connection with a mortgage application may ask the customer a small number of additional question that relate to risk factors associated with the insurance to be offered. For example, in order to assist in the determination of what life insurance to offer, and at what price, the web site may ask the customer about tobacco usage and history of certain serious illnesses. Since many insurance applications involve a large number of questions, offering the customer the chance to obtain insurance by answering a small number of questions may increase the chance that the customer will take the mortgage and insurance as a package. The customer may also be offered the chance to pay for the mortgage and insurance in a unified monthly payment, which may further entice the customer to obtain the mortgage and insurance as a package.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described in the detailed description. This summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.